And then there was Aled Jones

Recently I had a diagnostic operation that involved partial sedation.

This seemed like a preferable option to no pain relief at the time, when in fact, it made the entire thing seem like a demi physical nightmare I couldn't escape from.

I emailed a friend afterwards;

I had to have an endoscopy, a camera down the throat. They sedate you, but not completely. The theatre nurse was called Princess and dreadfully astringent, I'd been nil by mouth for three days and was stressed out and the doctors were playing the song from the Snowman when they wheeled me in. This makes the experience laughable retrospectively, but I keep remembering it and shuddering.

Princess was around 5'4'' and the sort of clean brunette that reads Heat Magazine and gets her nails made from acrylic. Just the sort of person to calm you down as you go in to an operating theatre.

Then imagine a russian doctor who looks like a young Jean Luc Pickard but talks like John Malcovich on drugs playing with an old stero in the corner. All of a sudden, Aled Jones's voice launches out of the speaker system and the lights get dimmed as they inject your canular with something that makes you think of comedy.

And while ubiquitous symphonic Christmas music launches from the stereo they stick a tube down your throat and you can barely pull yourself out of a narcoleptic frenzy as they hold you down.

You see the reason I was traumatised.

I keep telling myself that relaying the incident is cathartic. It may be, but it may also be reminiscent of Freud's lectures on Intellectualisation.